Chapter Text
Rumi taps her finger against her desk, her perfectly-manicured nail striking against the polished wood, the sound echoing through the silence of her office.
Sitting across from her, expression smug, hands folded, is Jinu.
He’s reclined against one of her meeting chairs in a pink dress shirt bright enough to give her a headache, a stark contrast to the no-nonsense decor surrounding them: black leather upholstery and wooden furniture.
The light walls and plants help brighten the space. Rumi has a small army of them in different sizes taking up space on the bookshelves, the windowsill, and at the corner of her desk. They relax her—give her peace.
Unlike Jinu.
“Absolutely not,” Rumi shakes her head.
The illusion of professionalism between them shatters when he crosses his arms and hunches forward like a teenager throwing a fit. “What? Why?”
Rumi massages her temples. “I’m not—Why would I—that’s just crazy!”
“You said you had a tooth problem!”
Rumi levels him with a withering glare. “When you said, and I quote, ‘I know a guy’, I didn’t think you were going to suggest a veterinarian.”
“Well who else is there?” He challenges. “Is your dentist trained in oversized canine incisors?”
She thinks of poor old Dr. Kwon and the heart attack he might get so close to retirement if she shows up at his clinic as a wolf with golden eyes.
Jinu sees her grimace. “See?” He leans back again. “I thought so.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Rumi snaps, picking up her iced coffee—the same one that she gets every single morning. She rattles the ice around before taking a sip. “Should I waltz on in as a wolf and hope they don’t tranquilize me on the spot?”
Jinu leans forward with a challenging glare. “You could waltz in as yourself and pretend to be a client—one with an intimidating and suspiciously wolf-like dog that’s recently come to your care.”
Rumi sets her jaw and raises an eyebrow at him. Then she sighs, her shoulders relaxing as she leans onto her desk and drops her head to her hands. God. It’s so annoying when Jinu has a good idea.
“How do you even know them?”
“She’s been Derpy’s vet forever.” He starts fishing for his phone in his pocket. “Dr. Park’s the best you’re gonna get in the area. Sweet old lady. Decades of experience, the whole nine yards. They run their own place so it’s a more tight-knit clinic than the big ones in the city, so.” He shrugs.
Rumi chews on her lip. Well. That’s good, at least. She’d very much prefer it that way. Her phone vibrates where it lays face-up on her desk, and a brief glance shows her a text from an unknown number with an address and a website.
Jinu, at the other side of the table, stares at her phone—then at Rumi. “You don’t have my number saved?”
Rumi shrugs. “No.”
“I’d be hurt if I weren’t so impressed that you can recognize my number by heart!”
"You know what," Rumi gives her wall clock a cursory glance. "I have a class soon. I think it's time to go."
"Hey, not so fast, I'm in the middle of being dramatic about this most recent breach of our friendship—"
Rumi gives him a flat stare before getting up from her desk and opening the door. “Goodbye, Jinu!”
“Not even a thank-you for my wonderful contribution to your little problem?”
“Oh you contribute to my problems plenty,” Rumi waves him away and out into the hallway.
“But you’re going to at least try, right?” Jinu gets up and gathers his things, lingering by the bookshelf next to the door as he slings his bag over his shoulder.
Rumi presses her lips into a thin line.
“I’ll think about it.”
Unfortunately for Rumi, there's nothing to lose by trying.
In truth, she also needs the care: more and more she’s been feeling herself develop aches and pains that probably needed attention every time she transforms, but it’s been years since she’d last seen Dr. Han. Years since the last time she’d come back home.
She and Celine had a system, and it worked. Her adoptive mother is resourceful in ways Rumi never learned how to cultivate in herself. Unfortunately, their creeping estrangement had likewise cut her off from Celine’s network of confidants and resources—and there’s terribly few people in this world who know about Rumi's lycanthropy.
All she's got left is Jinu—and he’s as clueless as she is.
So, fine. She’ll give it a try.
She marches back to her office after her morning lecture and puts the availability indicator on her doorway to ‘busy’. She opens up her computer and navigates to the clinic website, then checks a handful of local forums. It’s light research, but she’s good at this and quickly finds what she needs.
Dr. Park Eun-ju is well-respected, well-established, and most of all, well-beloved. Her clinic's been around for almost as long as Rumi’s been alive, save for a small bump within its first decade where it had to close down for a year or two. It’s a small family-run affair. They even have a little write-up on them in the clinic’s ‘About Us’ page: there’s apparently a Mr. Park and two kids—the elder of which is a veterinarian too.
There's a little feedback page filled with genuine-looking testimonials, and an adorable photo gallery showcasing happy pets and even happier owners. It seems welcoming—relaxed.
Rumi makes an on-the-spot decision and opens the patient intake form.
So far everything is going terribly.
She tries not to cry at every other question. She can actively feel her cortisol levels go up as she goes through the document because how the fuck was she going to fill this out in good faith?
Age? Probably shouldn’t put thirty. Is four a good number?
Breed? She writes ‘TBD’ in neat script.
History? Leave blank—or, hold that thought, maybe an upset stomach and a bit of a toothache?
Medications? Maybe NyQuil. Vaccinations? Blank. Travel history? Does her human travel count? There was that conference in San Francisco recently, but… she should probably just put ‘none’ to be safe. Appetite? Normal-ish. Lots of red meat.
There's more, but she powers through until she makes it to the end of the form and schedules a visit for the next afternoon. Her shoulders sag when she finally hits 'send', and she exhales as though she’d just run a marathon. She might as well have—that was so uncomfortably exhausting.
“These stupid, stupid fangs," she pinches the bridge of her nose. She wonders whether or not she'll need to get an insurance plan for her potential vet visits—she can feel a headache forming already.
The thing about being a werewolf is that it takes an awful lot of time management.
The full moon doesn't give a shit about anything. It will come out every twenty-nine-and-a-half days whether Rumi likes it or not. It doesn't care about her errands or her quarterly deadlines or how difficult it is to schedule a dinner with her coworkers. It doesn't care if she's had a shitty week or a rough day or if New Year's eve is coming up. It will come around when it's time—and Rumi will inevitably turn. Her transformations are different during the full moons, nothing like the rest of the month when she can can turn and keep control and consciousness. She just wakes up the next morning with no memory of the night before—exhausted, disoriented, or on some truly unfortunate occasions, scared.
(She picks at her fingernails on habit. Makes sure that they're clean.)
Credit where credit is due: Celine had drilled into her system an unerring sense of perfectionism.
Rumi takes a leather-bound organizer out of her bag and opens it up to a page marked by a purple, fraying ribbon. The rest of her week is dictated by a loose set of bullet points and reminders, interspersed with a few personal thoughts. This organizer is both her journal and her weapon—an attempt at leveling the playing field against the flightful demands of her true nature.
She writes down the time and place for her appointment and checks off a long-empty box in her to-do list: schedule a 'check-up' (other kind). She's happy to enjoy the fleeting satisfaction of another thing crossed off of the list.
The rest of her schedule is pretty standard: lecture prep, gym days, an oil change, a grocery run by Friday, maybe brunch with Bobby on Saturday? There's also a manuscript that she needs to review for one of the students that she's on the panel for.
Day to day life, for the most part, is pretty mundane. But there's still that one last bullet point she needs to take care of, and it's coming up sooner than she'd like.
The full moon is happening in about ten days.
She circles out the date on her calendar page and adds a series of question marks after it. It is—unfortunately—scheduled on the day she needs to give out the Fall semester final.
Rumi groans—she'll have to call in a favor with Bobby. Amazingly reliable Bobby, who had come through for her time and time again without ever pressing her with questions.
Maybe she should ask if he wants to have lunch today. He'd be a sight for sore eyes: an errant ray of sunshine in Rumi's otherwise cloudy (and snowy) day. The crepe shop at the other side of campus would be a great place for a lunchtime treat, but the walk towards it is terribly cold.
It's a beautiful place in the winter, though. The campus she works at isn't so big that she'd need to drive around to get from one place to another, but it's large enough that there's no shortage of wide, open courtyards. They're empty right now, covered in a light blanket of snow, void of the usual gaggle of students that walk around in droves. The trees have iced over and the shrubs are tipped with frost, and it'd be picture-perfect if she weren't so cold.
She picks up her phone and sends Bobby a text.
Might as well go. It isn't that far and everything's better when you aren't hungry.
Mira was supposed to be finishing off her workday, but then Boff—her darling boy, her son, her feline companion—had curled up by her feet with a pitiful whine, and she just knew he'd eaten something he shouldn't have.
Again.
It quickly becomes obvious that it isn't anything she'd be able to handle at home. Mira throws on a puffer jacket and a cap and ushers him into his carrier. She's going to have to work late into the evening to finish the design she'd been working on, but in the wise words of some of her coworkers: 'It be like that, unnie.'
The drive is thankfully easy—Boff has never been one to give her a hard time, stomach sensitivities aside. They pull up to Dr. Park's clinic and find that it's been decorated for the winter holidays with cute little wreaths hanging from the main building's French windows. They're a nice addition of color against the white wooden slats of its exterior. It makes it look cozier than usual—and it was already plenty cozy without them. There's an annexed area next to the main building—the reception—with a stairway and ramp leading up to its entrance. She can see the reflection of her car on the tinted glass door and wide window panes as she pulls in, the parking lot crowded because it's shared between a bank on the left, and a donut shop to the right.
She smirks at the memory of a frantic doughnut shopper chased by an overexcited dog.
Mira checks on Boff in his carrier as soon as she's parked, and he doesn't look too bad: curled up and looking up at her with his big, sad eyes.
She reaches over to hold his face in her hands, and huffs in amusement when his expression scrunches up at the contact. She can't help but notice that the black spots along his otherwise white fur have slowly begun to gray, and she gently brushes along his head with her thumbs. Boff purrs under her touch, affectionate despite his apparent discomfort, nuzzling softly into her palms.
"It's okay," Mira coos, gentle and soft."Let's go and have you looked at."
She gives him one quick kiss on the forehead and picks up his carrier.
They get checked in at the reception with no problems because she and Abby—the vet tech—have done this song and dance many, many times before. Mira finds a seat somewhere close to the little snackbar and the mini-fridge, keeping Boff's carrier opened on her lap as they wait. No one else is in the lobby, but then again it's a weird time of day in the middle of the week, and she expects a steady uptick in patients as the afternoon grows later.
Abby finishes up at the computer having determined that Boff's condition isn't anything critical. "Dr. Choi will be with you after her 2PM client, so the wait might take a little over half an hour."
That gives Mira pause. "You mean Dr. Park?"
"Nope," he says casually, "Dr. Choi."
She's about to ask him to elaborate but his pager goes off and he excuses himself, rushing into one of the examination rooms where a dog sounds like it's very distressed and very sad about something.
It's only 1:49PM. She could read to pass the time, but she feels too distracted by the thought of Boff seeing someone other than Dr. Park for today. It wasn't that long ago since the last time she visited, and she's reluctant to go through the whole process of introducing Boff to someone entirely new on a day she hadn't planned for it. Has Dr. Park fallen ill? Perhaps just gone on vacation? She doesn't get much more time to wonder about it because Boff's ears twitch in attention and he turns towards the door. Mira follows his gaze, curious.
At 1:50PM, on the dot, the most beautiful woman Mira has ever seen in her life walks in.
Naturally she brushes the thought far, far away and looks down at Boff before she can catch her staring.
He’s acting a little weird and is just looking at her. There's something in his posture: curiosity, or maybe apprehension. Almost like he wants to rise up to his hackles and hiss at her but he isn't quite sure if he should.
The woman is the picture of sophistication: she has long, purple hair that cascades down her back, wearing a dark checkered coat with a black turtleneck underneath. The whole look is tied together by high-waisted jeans and heeled chelsea boots, and she looks like she just walked out of a movie set. Mira chances another glance towards her face—and at that exact same moment the woman pushes up her sunglasses to the crown of her head, her expression unreadable as she stands there in perfect posture and scans her surroundings.
Mira's met with intense, dark eyes—it makes her bristle.
See, she's got a little bit of a problem with overbearingly authoritative figures. It's almost a knee-jerk reaction. Call it a bad habit from childhood or whatever, but she fucking hates it, and this woman looks about as uptight as she is attractive—and where Boff had seemed reluctant to go on the defensive, Mira isn't. Her jaw sets in challenge, her eyebrow ticking upwards as the woman regards her.
And then she speaks, and the entire impression just… falls apart.
"Do you mind if I sit there?" She points at an empty chair one seat over from Mira. There's probably five other empty chairs and a whole couch in the reception area, but she apparently wants to sit on this one.
"Um." Mira blinks, thrown in for a loop by the nervousness in the other woman's voice. "Sure?"
"Thanks," she says with surprising kindness. She shrugs off her coat before taking her seat, folding and tucking it neatly underneath her arm where it's bundled up along with her purse. She flushes a little when she looks down at Boff. "It's just…. your cat's really cute."
"Oh." Mira would very much like to move past one-syllable responses, but she's still reeling from the intensity of that first impression, dizzy from how different this conversation is going from what she thought it would be. She looks down at her cat and gives him affectionate little scritches underneath his chin. "His name is Boff."
"Boff!" The woman says in quiet delight.
"Yeah," Mira finally feels like she's regaining her bearings. Boff snuggles up into her hand. "He's got a little bit of a tummy-ache, unfortunately."
"That's too bad," the woman mumbles, her brows pulling together in genuine concern.
Mira watches as Boff continues to stare at her, his whiskers pulled back, his head tilted and his ear twitching as he looks all over her.
"I think he's curious about you."
She smiles. "That tends to happen with me and cats."
"Not a cat person?"
"I think they just don't like me." She shrugs, but then she smiles down at Boff and gives him a little wave. "It's okay though, Boff, I forgive you."
"I don't think he dislikes you," Mira moves to give him scratches at the back of his head. "He just seems a little confused."
She laughs at that but makes no comment about it, content to let Boff inspect her with curiosity. They sit in a bit of silence, filled in by the droning noise of the mini fridge compressor and whatever commotion was going on in the room that Abby disappeared into.
Just like Boff, something about this woman compels her. She decides to break the short-lived silence. "What about you?"
She blinks at Mira. "Me?"
"Where's your animal?"
There’s a split-second where she looks like a deer caught in the headlights. Mira sees that wall of self-assurance flicker for a minute, that same hint of nervousness from earlier slipping through the cracks as she stammers: "Well—Um—She's… running late?"
Mira gives her a long, hard look. "Your dog is running late?"
"No! I mean, I'm bringing her later, after this first meeting, at another date." She huffs out, looking terribly defensive. "My dog knows how to keep a schedule. I mean I know how to keep my dog on a schedule!—I mean—"
So. She's pretty, nice, kind of confident—though that's up for debate—but definitely weird. Weird is good, though. She's always liked weird.
"So do you have, like, a shared Google calendar with your dog or—?"
She gets an exasperated eye-roll in response.
"Do you send her an invite for walks—"
"I'm glad one of us finds it funny—"
"I guess she didn't RSVP for this vet appointment."
That one makes the woman laugh, and Mira can't help but feel a little smug about it. She wants to hear it again—the sound of it fluttering around her like a melody. It's a pretty laugh. She's a pretty a girl. Mira supposes it all made sense.
Their conversation is cut short when the examination room bursts open and a hyperactive labradoodle comes running out.
"Rocky!"
Mira's quick to pull Boff closer. He's safe—she knows this in theory—but she can't help but feel on edge whenever she brings him outside of her apartment. Rocky isn't really doing anything to bother Boff, just sniffing around the area in curiosity, excitedly barking at all the new people around him. It startles Boff regardless. Abby picks up on this and starts calming Rocky down—but then, out of nowhere, Rocky whimpers and stays put.
Mira turns and sees the woman next to her pinning Rocky down with a stern glare. She glances towards Boff and Mira to check on him. "Is he alright?"
"He's a tough little guy," Mira whispers more to Boff than anyone else, her shoulders relaxing. Her apparent protectiveness over him doesn't go unnoticed—something that Mira files away for later. "He'll be fine."
She sighs. "Good."
Rocky and his owner are out the door soon after, and when Mira turns back she realizes that there's one more person next to Abby, and that she's probably Dr. Choi.
There's suddenly some stark competition for 'most beautiful woman she's ever seen in her life'—and again, Mira brushes the thought away before it sticks around for too long. Two in one day. Go figure.
Dr. Choi looks to be about her age or younger, standing in navy blue scrubs and a whitecoat, a teal stethoscope hanging around her neck. Her hair's tied up into a loose bun, with short bangs that run longer at the sides of her face. She's holding two physical files: a thick folder with an impressive stack of records, and a thin one that looked brand new. She looks up from the document she'd just been scanning and smiles at them both.
It's dizzying. Bright and sunny and pretty and framed by freckles and—
Mira isn't ready for it.
And neither is the woman beside her, apparently, because Mira swears she sees her mouth hang open and her cheeks flush red at that very same smile. She tucks a lock of purple hair behind her ear, looks over at Mira, then grins in knowing amusement.
Mira realizes she's probably got the same stupid look on her face and schools her expression as fast as she can.
"I read through your walk-in request while Abby was finishing up with Rocky," Dr. Choi has the thicker file open, walking closer towards Mira. "You must be Mira-nim!"
"And you're not Dr. Park."
Mira winces at herself. That could have probably gone better.
"Nope!" She's undeterred. "Dr. Park is well on her way to retirement, vacationing out in South East Asia to look at tarsiers. Have you heard of them? Fascinating little creatures! I'd talk your ear off about them all day if we weren't trying to keep a schedule this afternoon, so I guess you're both spared an unskippable cutscene."
That easy smile hasn't left her lips. Mira finds herself inclined to believe every word she says.
"I'm Dr. Choi—Zoey. Park Eun-ju, who you both may have been expecting today, is my mother. Divorced parents," she says off-handedly with a vague gesture in the air as if that explained everything. "You're here for little guy's stomach-ache?"
“Yup.”
"Well, continuing the spirit of awkward introductions, I'd wager this fine gentleman is Boff." She sinks down until she's looking at Mira's cat, holding her hand out tentatively and letting him get comfortable with her touch and presence. "I spent a lot of time studying the clinic’s regulars before I started covering for mom," she looks up at Mira. "How are Nussa, Fucci, Mui-mui, and Dustrag?"
The other woman turns and looks at Mira in surprise. "You have four other cats?"
"Yeah," Mira smirks. "They're a handful. This guy right here is Mr. Upset Stomach."
"Just like you, or so my mom says," Dr. Choi says it without thinking when Boff starts rubbing against her hand. She giggles. "I probably shouldn't have said that, but she talks about work over dinner, so." She shrugs.
Mira, to her own surprise, starts laughing. "You're fine. It's not like it's wrong."
Her apologetic grin is endearing, and she could probably use it to get away with almost anything. She gives her knee a light slap as she stands up, then opens up the thinner folder she's got on hand.
"We'll I'll be right with Boff after my next patient, okay? Which means you," she turns to the other woman, "are my two o'clock appointment. Ryu Rumi?"
"Yes," she says, standing up and extending her hand for a handshake. She has a diplomatic smile on her face, charming and practiced to perfection. Mira can hardly imagine what it must be like to be on the receiving end of it.
Dr. Choi, however, is apparently immune. She puts one hand on her waist and looks up at Rumi with a glare. She holds Rumi's client file up with her other.
"Rumi-nim, respectfully, this is the worst intake form I've ever seen in my life. "
Mira holds back a snicker.
The woman—Rumi—looks taken aback, deflating even as she looks down at Dr. Choi who's definitely much shorter than her. "Oh. Um. Well—"
"I don't even see this mysteriously large dog that you apparently know nothing about." Dr. Choi looks down at her file. "Breed—to be discussed?" Rumi winces. "Where is she?"
"At home?" Rumi sounds unsure.
Dr. Choi just keeps glaring at her.
Rumi huffs. "This was just meant to be an initial consultation, you know. As a new client?"
"You should have still brought her." Dr. Choi sighs—deep and weary—then points back towards her office with her thumb over her shoulder. "Follow me."
Rumi, still a little befuddled, nods and follows along. "Yes, ma'am."
Mira, who had been watching the entire exchange with barely-contained amusement, almost starts laughing right then and there. Yes, ma'am? She's so surprised to see how quickly Rumi had folded—the very same Rumi who barged into this clinic with enough personality to make Mira prickly and defensive.
She follows behind Dr. Choi who continues to nag her as Rumi scratches at the back of her head. Mira can't help but overhear them as they walk down the hall:
"You did not give your dog NyQuil, so help me god—"
"Well, see, it's a bit complicated—"
"You didn't even write her name! It's just blank!"
"I guess I could fill that in just now—"
Their voices begin to fade away as Dr. Choi makes it to the door. Rumi glances back towards Mira one last time before she steps into the room.
Good lord. She's got big, brown, sad eyes that scream: 'Help?'
Mira actually lets herself laugh this time. She scratches behind Boff's ears, a light and fluttering feeling in her stomach at this afternoon's turn of events.
"What do you say, Boff? Think we'll see more of them?"
Something tells her that she will.